finops:
  description: Financial operations guidance for managing TheNewsAPI spend, optimizing API usage, and forecasting costs across plan tiers.

  pricingModel:
    type: subscription
    billingCycles:
      - monthly
      - annual
    annualDiscount: true
    annualDiscountNote: Annual billing provides approximately 15-17% savings versus monthly rates across all paid plans.
    freeTier: true
    freeTierNote: Free plan requires no payment details. Suitable for prototyping and low-volume use.

  plans:
    - name: Free
      monthlyCost: 0.00
      annualMonthlyCost: 0.00
      currency: USD
      dailyRequests: 100
      costPerRequest: 0.00
      bestFor: Development, prototyping, personal projects

    - name: Basic
      monthlyCost: 19.00
      annualMonthlyCost: 16.00
      currency: USD
      dailyRequests: 2500
      costPerRequest: 0.0076
      annualCostPerRequest: 0.0064
      bestFor: Small applications, newsletters, lightweight production use

    - name: Standard
      monthlyCost: 49.00
      annualMonthlyCost: 41.00
      currency: USD
      dailyRequests: 10000
      costPerRequest: 0.0049
      annualCostPerRequest: 0.0041
      bestFor: Mid-size applications, content platforms, dashboards

    - name: Pro
      monthlyCost: 79.00
      annualMonthlyCost: 66.00
      currency: USD
      dailyRequests: 25000
      costPerRequest: 0.0032
      annualCostPerRequest: 0.0026
      bestFor: High-traffic applications, media aggregators, large-scale data pipelines

    - name: Enterprise
      monthlyCost: custom
      currency: USD
      dailyRequests: custom
      bestFor: Organizations with 25,000+ daily requests, custom SLA requirements, or dedicated support needs

  costOptimization:
    - strategy: Use annual billing
      description: Switch to annual billing to save approximately 15-17% versus month-to-month rates on Basic, Standard, and Pro plans.

    - strategy: Cache responses locally
      description: TheNewsAPI uses state-of-the-art caching on their side, but consumers should also cache responses in their own infrastructure to avoid redundant requests consuming daily quota.

    - strategy: Use the limit parameter efficiently
      description: Request only as many articles as needed per call using the limit parameter. Requesting fewer articles per call preserves daily quota for other operations.

    - strategy: Filter precisely at the API level
      description: Apply category, language, locale, and domain filters at query time rather than filtering large result sets client-side. This reduces returned payload size and keeps pagination costs low.

    - strategy: Monitor daily quota usage
      description: Track HTTP 402 (usage_limit_reached) responses to detect when daily limits are approaching. Implement alerting to avoid unexpected service interruptions.

    - strategy: Start on Free, graduate to paid
      description: The Free plan supports 100 daily requests at no cost with no card required. Use it to validate integration before committing to a paid plan.

    - strategy: Choose the right plan for actual usage
      description: Analyze average daily request volume over a 30-day period before selecting a plan. Overshooting to Pro when Standard suffices adds unnecessary spend.

  enterpriseContact:
    url: https://www.thenewsapi.com/contact
    description: Contact TheNewsAPI sales team for custom enterprise pricing, volume discounts, and SLA terms beyond the Pro plan.